


Just A Poor Misguided Fool

by Alcoholic_kangaroo



Category: Camp Camp (Web Series), Unwind Dystology - Neal Shusterman
Genre: Angst, Death, M/M, pedophile!David
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2019-08-17 05:11:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16509977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alcoholic_kangaroo/pseuds/Alcoholic_kangaroo
Summary: David agreed to become a counselor as a harvest camp because he wanted to give children the best time they could have before losing their lives. He didn't expect to fall in love with one of his charges.This is a Camp Camp AU set in the Unwind Universe. No characters shared, all you need to know is that in the Unwind Universe, parents are allowed to hand over their children to be harvested for their body parts if they're sick of them.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kialish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kialish/gifts).



> Gifting this fic to Kialish for getting me into Camp Camp.
> 
> Also, in Unwind the earlier age to be unwound is thirteen but I'm dropping it to ten here so I can keep their canon ages.

David can’t name the exact day, or even the exact year, that he decided he wanted to work at a camp but he supposes the whim had existed in some unmanifested form in his subconscious years before the thoughts had coagulated into a coherent thought. He remembers looking up to the counselors and junior counselors at Camp Campbell, filled with admiration and love for the adults that were willing and able to spread their affection and knowledge to a younger generation. His own family had been well off enough, financially, but his parents had often substituted financial love for physical affection and emotional closeness.

  
The months of September through May were cold. Notoriously cold. And not just because the winter winds and rain inevitably moved in as the dogs days of summer turned into black cats and shining-nosed reindeer. They were cold in the way only a young boy, sitting alone in a stark, cream-furnished bedroom, reading alone in an otherwise empty house, knew as the meaning of cold.

There had been one Christmas Eve, David’s ninth on earth, that he had run up to hug his mother in excitement because she had come back. She had come back! To her empty house and her neglected son and the plastic tree with white lights and silver tinsel. When she was supposed to be in the company of others. HIs father, his father’s colleagues, wives in long gowns sipping champagne, drolling in haughty accents. With a dozen real trees, smelling of pine and artificial snow, covered in enveloped and silver bills. The annual Christmas ball, that was where she was supposed to be.

Instead, she had come home.

David had been sitting in the side room when the door had opened, and he had heard her clack by on her expensive silver heels. Even if the servants had been on staff that night, even if they hadn’t been given the holiday to spend with their own families, the boy would have known his mother’s walk anywhere. The shimmer of sequins and fur had caused a spasm somewhere in his chest.

He had been so excited he had forgotten about the candy cane in his hand.

“David!” she had all but shrieked, pushing him back so forcefully he had slammed into the corner of the nearby bookcase. Pain had shot down his spine, leaving him with pain in his lower legs for days afterward. “Don’t get your sticky little hands on my gown! It’s bad enough I lost my new earring.”

  
But there had been more earrings. He had stood in the background, watching her rummage through her jewelry case, before choosing a pair that she considered special enough for the occasion, diamond snowflakes for the season. A present from his father that he had been told to sign his name on two years ago, to claim they were from him, though they all knew he had no money and no taste.

If she remembered the earrings were from her son she showed no sign of it. David watched from behind, staring at the dual faces, symmetrical with her nose nearly to the mirror. The snowflakes glinted like real ice in the vanity lights. Cold, silver and white and translucent.

Then she had left again without a pat, word, or glance towards her only child.

No matter how many blankets David had piled onto his bed that night, he had continued to shiver as if caught outside in a heinous blizzard.  
Camp was different. He was never scolded for sloshing through mud or touching one of the counselors with grubby hands. He was never pushed away, grounded, or locked alone inside an empty room. When he had a cut or a scrape or a bruise, they would pick him up, set him on the counter in the nurse station, and bandage him up with a kiss and a lollipop.

Even on the coldest, rainiest days of the summer, when the nooks and crannies of the cabin had leaked with acid rain and the bed had felt as damp and cold as a November morning, he had felt warm. Hot, even, as if the very sun itself had been absorbed through his pores and made itself home inside his chest. Whenever he touched a plastic cup or rubber ball, he would find himself surprised the object didn’t merely melt beneath his fingers.

He officially decided to become a park ranger his first year at university. Not the same as a camp counselor, but camp counselor is a temporary gig. Kids do not want to be taught macrame by a forty-year-old. But a ranger is a permanent job and he could still teach and lead kids through the wilderness, show them the healing qualities of nature and fresh air and the blazing sun. 

David’s father registered him as a major in business administration the summer before he started at university. He never asked David if he wanted to major in business. He never even bothered to ask David how had done in his classes to gauge his strengths. He just told his secretary, “Make sure he’s ready to start at the company as soon as he’s finished with school.” David’s first real act of defiance had been to march his behind down to, well, his laptop, and updated his major to Wildlife and Forest management on the school website.

He was only seventeen then. Nearly eighteen, he would reach the age of freedom by Christmas, but if they had found out...

Of course, they didn’t find out. Not before he was eighteen anyway. Not until he was safe. Not until he was far past the age where a child could legally be sent to be unwound. It had taken his parents four years to learn about the defiance, when they had received his diploma in the mail and no matter how many ways you try to spell it, Wildlife and Business do not look anything alike.

His second step towards independence, ironically enough, had been carried out by his parents, when they removed his name from all their accounts and papers. 

At least by then he already started a steady, if less than stellar, career at Starbucks, and had managed to eke by on his meager paychecks.

But he hadn’t gone to school to be a barista! He wanted to be a forest ranger!

Every ad he replied to gave him the same answer “Need previous experience.”

How do you get experience if nobody will hire you?

He went to summer camp for ten years, isn’t that enough to say he understands the ins and outs of a forest? He had spent countless hours researching or studying one specimen or another on various school trips or for homework. He could name any tree, blindfolded, by scent or feel of the bark alone. He could name over three hundred species of birds in North American, English and Latin names. He could live on the land by scavenging off tubers and berries.

But he needed “experience.”

So had come David’s big idea.

He wanted to be a camp counselor? As a newly graduated twenty-two year old that was the perfect age to live out the old fantasy.

His entire body had tingled at the very idea when it had first come to him.

That warmness, as distant as it had become the last few years, had started to seep back into his body. Not burning hot as it had once been, but soothing and comforting as a crackling fire on a cold January night. He envisioned guitar sing-alongs, swimming lessons off the end of a dock, kayak races, s’mores around a blazing bonfire, games of capture the flag, archery lessons. He imagined the children in their immaculate matching camp shirts with a selection of mismatched shorts and colorful shoes: sneakers, flip-flops, boots, whatever the individual or day called for.

He tried not to think about cute boys in shorts a little too short. He tried not to think about them lifting their arms in a precious yawn, showing off slivers of their bellies. He tried not to think of their droopy, sleepy eyes as they retired from the fire at night, full of s’mores and hot chocolate and good cheer.

He still tries not to think of those things because those are things he is not supposed to think of. That’s what his psychologist tells him. Or is she a psychiatrist? David can never remember which is which. He’s pretty sure one is allowed to give meds and one of them isn’t but he isn’t sure which is which. His does. She gives him a lot of meds. She has to; she doesn’t have time to speak to all the counselors at this camp directly. If she did, she wouldn’t have time to talk to the children.

Camp Campbell was the twenty-third camp that David applied to. The first twenty-two had all sent him rejection letters: “As much as we would appreciate your employment with our organization, we have come to the conclusion that you are overqualified for this position.”

When David had applied to Camp Campbell, it had been a last-ditch attempt. It was early June at the time, the other summer camps were already staffed for the year and all the advertisements for counselors had dwindled down before disappearing together. There had been no for Camp Campbell. They did not advertise that they needed any more counselors.

For all David had known, they might have no longer even be operating.

David had made the drive out to Camp Campbell every summer for ten years. He had spent nine months of every year daydreaming about the highways, then the one lane roads, then the dirt roads, that lead to the camp. He knew every sign on the path. He had spent hours staring at the paper map in his lap, watching for every turn and ever landmark, eager to reach the final destination. He knew the town, the road, the mailbox number.

He had sent his resume to his beloved childhood camp working off memory, nostalgia, and hope alone.

And they had responded!

Not with a yes or a not but a, “We’d like to set up a time for an interview. Are you available on Tuesday?”

It had been David’s big chance. He had known, just known, that if they met him. If they got to know him. If they saw how happy and bubbly and kind he could be. They couldn’t turn him away, right? They just couldn’t. He would be so good for the children. He would be the big brother figure that so many neglected children like he had been needed.

He knew the drive by heart. He didn’t look it up. He just jumped in his car and drove. At first, he listened to the radio, some classic rock station from the next town over. Then the signal had turned to static and he had inserted a tape of the Monkees and sang along as joyfully as he had ever sung in his life.

“Cheer up sleepy Jean, oh, what can it mean, to be a daydream believer, and a homecoming queen?”

Everything was starting to come together. He had known it. There was just a feeling deep in his belly. This would be the turning point of his life. He would be hired and he would work at this came for four or five years, get the experience he needed, then he would be hired as a real forest ranger. Once he came to these woods he would, in essence, never leave. For that one moment in life, his biggest worry was looking like a dork for arriving at the interview thirty minutes early.

And then he had seen the fence.

There, there had never been a fence before? Right? Surely David would remember a fence.

And there was barb wire along the top?

David remembers some kids trying to escape in his youth. Especially the older kids. The teenagers trying to get their hands on booze and tobacco and maybe some chicks. But this...this fence is electric. He can hear it crackling above him as he slows to a stop outside the gates. An electric fence? Razor wire? At a summer camp?

‘Bears,’ he had thought to himself, frantically, in the seconds between stopping and the man in the booth asking for his ID. ‘Or, or maybe they opened a hospital for the criminally insane nearby. This is to protect the children from what’s outside, not keep them inside.’

“Welcome to Campbell Harvest Camp,” the bored looking man asked, middle-aged with a mustache damp from. “Do you have an appointment?”

After that, David had gone on autopilot. His brain had disconnected from his body. Even as he drove through the gates of the camp, his mind was screaming to turn around, to just get out of here, but his hands rotated the wheel and the car coasted down the hill towards the guest parking.

The children in this camp were not wearing colorful shorts, just plain tan khakis, but they were wearing matching Camp Campbell shirts. The same exact ones David had worn as a child, as the one in his backseat. He had brought it along, thinking maybe it would give him an edge, if he were to bring it along for laughs and mention how many greats summer he had spent on these few acres of land.

It all seemed like a farce.

This was wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. This was supposed to be a place of joy. Of learning and freedom and acceptance.

A harvest camp? Cambell agreed to let the government license his beloved childhood home as a harvest camp? The very place that is the anthesis of joy, learning, freedom, and acceptance?

He left the shirt in his car. It would be rude to just leave without an explanation so he followed the instructions to the administrative building, fully intent to explain his situation, politely thank them for the opportunity but explain he must decline and leave.

Except, there was a boy.

A small boy. White-blond hair, almost platinum, with cherry red lips and a dimple on the left when he smiled. All in white. Not dressed in yellow and khaki like the others but a robe that seems like it would go nearly to his ankles, if he hadn’t gathered it up around himself.

He greeted David in the waiting area, smiling sweetly, gently at David in a way that caused his heart to flutter. The exact sort of boy that David tries not to think about with soft hair and pretty arms. David felt his fingers twitch. Revulsion clenched his stomach in two.

“I’m Jesse,” he said, swinging his legs over the edge of the too-high chair. Pale, as if they’d never seen the light of day. So wrong for a camper. Campers have sun-kissed skin, warm to the touch. How long could the boy have been here? Was he always shielded from the sun by those robes? HIs face was several shades darker than his legs. Still, the pale skin and white robes gave the boy an almost angelic glow. “I’m waiting for my final evaluation. What are you here for?”

“Final evaluation?” David asked, ignoring the second part of the question. He watched the boy's legs swing.

“To make sure I’m prepared to join Father.”

David knew the boy was a tithe. He’s never been a harvest camp but he’s heard of these children. The ones assigned from birth, from their very families, to be a sacrificed as a gift to God.

“Are you scared?” David asked, then immediately bit his lip. Of course, the boy was scared. He was ten. Ten. David knows this because all tithes are sent to harvest camps on their tenth birthday, the earliest possible time a child may be unwound.

Jesse shrugged, his shoulders somehow looking more fragile beneath the layers of white cloth.

“I was when he came,” he admitted, speaking quietly as if this was supposed to be a secret. “But Counselor Daniel really helped me.”

“What’d he do?”

“He leads us in daily prayers and teaches us about the process, that stuff. I mean, I’ve always known how this all works, my minister taught us about it, but I don’t know. Counselor Daniel is just, he’s really nice, you know? It doesn’t sound like lies when he tells us about it and I know he loves us all and I guess, I guess I know somebody who loves us that much wouldn’t hurt us? I trust Counselor Daniel. I know that sounds stupid.”

“It doesn’t,” David said quickly, thinking back on his own experiences at camp. A different sort of camp, different outcomes, but he recognizes that feeling. The importance of caring counselors who you could trust, who loved you and protected you. “It doesn’t sound stupid at all. You’re right, if he really loves you then, of course, he’d only want what’s best for you.”  
The boy had disappeared shortly after, leaving David alone in the waiting room alone to think and sweat and breathe uncomfortable in and out through his nose. He watched the clock, his stomach in turmoil. Hands shaking. Each tick of the hand on the clock overhead giving him the urge to rush to the bathroom and throw up.

Jesse’s appointment was so short than he emerged only ten minutes later, smiling and giving David a friendly wave on his way out. David waved back a second too late, the boy already passed him.

He would never get the opportunity to wave at that boy again.

True, that goes for most people in life, but in this situation? It was definite.

That boy may never get to wave to anybody ever again.

But he was smiling.

Another ten minutes went by. David thought about the boy in white. He thought about the other kids he had seen, the ones in the yard in the normal camp outfits.

Did they have a counselor like this Daniel? One there to reassure and comfort them?

Did they have somebody, an adult, to make their last weeks, their last days, on earth enjoyable?

Or do they spend that time around cruel men and women that push them around? Do they hit them? Yell at them? Insult them? Do they joke about their impending doom? Do they tell them they’re worthless? Do those poor children experience any kindness in their last days?

The interview goes off without a hitch. The woman who interviews his is delighted to know he was a former member, back before the camp was upgraded, and asks several questions about his experience.

When he accepts the position, he feels like he’s shaking hands with the devil.


	2. Chapter 2

The words “drug cocktail” had sounded fancy to David when he was a young, impressionable child. Cocktails were the sweet-smelling beverages his parents drank that fizzled against his nose and made him sneeze; the colorful concoctions of candy apple red or rust orange or the ocean-clear turquoise they carried around in frosted tumblers or delicately stemmed martini glasses. They sometimes came with cherries or little umbrellas. They were classy. They were the drinks of 50s sitcoms and tropical getaways.

Staring at the pile of pills in his hand, David contemplates how trashy the medicinal variety of a cocktail is in comparison to the liquid popsicles of his youth. Foreboding. Like one of those anti-drug campaign ads from the early 90s where the pills were all generic round tablets in pastel colors resembling candy more than the mind-melting substances they truly were.

Once, in college, David had done ecstasy with some friends. It had looked like the pictures in those ads. Necco wafer pink, like the top of the _ Baby Soft  _ perfume his nanny dabbed between her breasts every morning. The smell had also been thick and overpowering whenever he had nuzzled his face into her chest, sometimes leaving him nauseous but he had been so desperate for physical affection it had not mattered. He gladly dealt with a little rolling of the stomach for the warm, generous hugs of the woman.

She had been deported shortly after David’s sixth birthday. He had never been given a reason for her disappearance, but he had heard rumors among the maids about jewelry gone missing.

The memory of  _ Baby Soft  _ perfume, a memory that he didn’t really have because he had been so young, had made him sad for reasons he could not explain. The pill disappeared quickly into his mouth before he had a chance to dwell on why the pastel pink left a longing in his heart.

There had been another heart, a heart carved into the tablet. Last time somebody had tried to get him to try the drug there had been a crossbones and that had seemed ominous. But a pink heart was much more inviting, warm and friendly, like the stamp on a _ My Little Pony  _ or the logo on the side of a  _ Barbie  _ carrying case. His childhood friend next door, a little girl by the name of Ashley, had owned both those items and would bring them over to play with David. 

Or she had for a short while, anyway. Until his father had caught him playing with the ponies one day and informed him that if his son wanted to play with plastic animals he would buy him some dinosaurs or jungle creatures, not a cotton candy-colored girl’s toy.

Before David knew it, he was living for the first time that night.

He lost his virginity in an abandoned warehouse full of strobe lights and drinks that glowed with multicolored fluorescent cubes. He lost his virginity that night he swallowed the heart pink pill, in a sea of color and sound and movement and heat. So much heat. Perhaps the hottest he had ever felt. Even hotter than the hottest, most welcoming days at Camp Cambell had been. The memories had been fuzzy. Arms all around him. Some thin, some broad, some white, some brown, some with tinkling metal bracelets, some with yellow wristbands. They all had yellow wristbands. He had laughed over this fact and made them all lift their arms to show them off, screaming over the music, “This whole time I was Captain Planet! How did I not see it?” This whole time!”

He had woken several hours later beside the body of an unconscious fourteen-year-old boy. His own throat had been covered in bite marks, his nipples sore and raw. His roommate’s girlfriend, a sweet girl by the name of Rachel, drove him back to the dorms, reassuring him that entire time that he had not raped anybody and he wasn’t in trouble.

No matter what way he looked at it, fourteen was not an adult. He never even knew the kid’s name. Wasn’t even sure if he was fourteen. He looked fourteen. But he could have been ten, or twelve, or sixteen. Not eighteen. No eighteen year old looked or smelled that good.

David never touched ecstasy again. Or any drug for that matter. And he most definitely never allowed himself to be dragged away to another rave.

Only legal medication from here on out.

Why don’t over-the-counter pills ever come in shades of pink? Why don’t legal medications ever have stamps of hearts or crossbones or four-leaf clovers burnt into them? Circular tablets with little numbers on them, or clear capsules, in shade of white or pale yellow or brown. How dull.

The tap water is cold and clear. Well water. Harder than the stuff you’d get out in the cities but better tasting. Mineral water. Natural mineral water. The mineral water you get in the cities have the minerals taken out then put back in. Or at least, that’s what David has heard.

If you leave a glass of the Camp Campbell water on the bedside table overnight, a little pile of sediment settles on the bottom. Cloudy white. As if a pill has been dissolved in it. Something white, like Aspirin, not pink.

David counts the pills as he swallows each one.

One, antidepressant, with the added benefit of being a libido suppressant. Two, antianxiety, to keep himself from crying on a daily basis. Three, allergy medication. The joke of the universe to give a pollen allergy to a man obsessed with the great outdoors. Four, joint medication. How were his knees already starting to ache at the ripe old age of twenty-four? Five, Men’s One a Day multivitamin.

Shortly after David first started working at this camp two years ago he had developed an iron deficiency. Mostly because he rarely had an appetite these days and often found it difficult to finish a meal. He habitually skips dinner at least two or three times a week. He could probably skip the multivitamin and just try to eat healthier.

But how do you choke down a plate of spaghetti and meatballs when you just an hour ago said goodbye to a young girl who, only two weeks ago, still had her full life ahead of her? How do you swirl the noodles around the fork when you know a surgeon’s hands are wrist deep in her intestines?

“David, come on,” Gwen, the co-counselor for his group yells through the door of their shared bathroom. She’s banging on it in her usual manner, making the thin piece of plywood and filler shake. “The kids will be here any minute.”

He swallows the pills in one mouthful, washing down with a Dixie cup full of the cold mountain water. Then he splashes himself in the face. The frigidity of it right from the tap sends a shudder down his spine. A good shudder. A reminder he’s alive. That he has nerve endings, synapses, a brain to register the shock.

“Coming,” he calls, already twisting the knobs of the sink. He grabs one of their fluffy white towels from the rack and dabs at his face. They’re ridiculously luxurious, much more so than expected given their otherwise basic accommodations. Like new but smelling like jasmine and vanilla. Nothing like the thin, drab things the campers are afforded. They smell like cheap laundry detergent and feel like sandpaper on soft adolescent skin.

Troop Seven. That’s their troop. David remembers back when there were no troops. When the camp was only able to house one troop because there were certain expectations for quality and one on one time and unique activities. When a certain amount of ingenuity was expected. Back when kayaking and archery were daily forms of exercise. Not weight lifting and laps around the yard.

They were informed yesterday they would be expecting three new recruits this morning before breakfast. Still not enough to replace the five kids they had lost in the last month. But maybe enough to plump up their numbers to a less depressing sight. The gaps left from the ones already gone are obvious and distinct. Spots around the bonfires unfilled. Picnic tables abandoned. Leftover fruit salad in the communal Friday night dessert bowl.

David tries not to think about what those holes mean. He can’t allow himself to. If he allows himself to think of Ryan and Jose and Andrea next he’ll be thinking of Shirley and Harriet and Jem and Alicia and Jerianne and Hecter and Lee and Alex and Jasmine and-

The overnight counselor is already looking annoyed as he watches them walk past towards the front lawn. He’s stuck on overtime, a twelve-hour shift because David and Gwen are in charge of orientation for the new kids this morning. 

David doesn’t trust the man. He seems cruel in the way many of the old timers at this place are cruel. Normally, he receives some sense of relief from the knowledge the kids are usually asleep when he’s on duty, but this morning the man leaves him feeling uneasy. It’s a difficult decision. Should he try to rush today’s orientation, so he can get back to his charges early? At the same time, the new children also deserve a proper orientation, an introduction to the last home they’ll ever know.

The average time an Unwind spends at a harvest camp in the United States is three weeks. 

The average time an Unwind is stuck in Camp Campbell is two weeks.

The average time an Unwind is assigned to Troop Seven is two months.

David is good at finding excuses for why his kids can’t be unwound quite yet.

Oh, he has a stomachache. It might be food poisoning. Don’t want a recipient stuck with that.

Oh, I think she has a sprained knee. Better let it heal first.

Oh, they want to convert to Catholicism before their unwinding. Religious conversion is guaranteed in the charter and you know the priest won’t baptize them right away.

The kids today arrive in an SUV. As usual, they’re handcuffed inside. They all arrive handcuffed inside. All besides the tithes, but those unlucky few are under Daniel’s charge and therefore David himself has very little interaction with any of them.

The tithes also tend to only come one at a time. Many more parents send their children to be unwound out of disgust or indifference than out of Godly love.

The SUV is dark blue and the windows are so darkly tinted that not even a hint of profile is visible as it pulls up to the gate. Passerbys don’t like to see the miserable faces of the Unwinds staring back at them. They don’t like seeing their tears or the silent screams for help. If the window vibrates from the smashing of foreheads against glass then, well, maybe it’s just the bass of an over-priced stereo system.

David stretches a giant smile across his face and pitches his voice up higher than usual. First impressions are a big deal here and Gwen does nothing to improve their first moments at the camp.

The guard unlocks them from the rings set into the floors. The short chains attach to the middle of their cuffs, keeping their arms down, hands hanging below their knees. As if the metal bars separating the front seats from the back are not enough to protect the driver. But he doesn’t remove the cuffs, instead he cuffs each kid to the next, greatly decreasing the chances of them trying to make a run for it. This is the point they usually do try to dash for the front gates, a dangerous move as the electric fences are capable of killing a small enough child.

Not that the guards really care about the death of an Unwind. They just don’t like to deal with the new kids. They’re too unpredictable. If they lose one of them, even inside the fence, it is still their responsibility to hunt them down. Some of the other counselors drug them up their first few days, preferring the use of mild, or sometimes heavy, sedatives over kindness and understanding. They always make sure the drugs are out of their system for the procedure, however. No doctor will perform an unwinding on a sedated child.

These kids need nurturing, not drugs.

(Of course, considering David’s own morning cocktail, that seems like a rather hypocritical statement for him ever to voice aloud.)

The children line up in front of the SUV, grumbling and pulling at their bindings. Muttering under their breath. They’re easy to tell apart just from a quick glance at the papers. Even without looking at the little photographs attached to the upper right corner of each file, they are not a homogenous bunch.

Nikki Turner. The only female in the bunch. Age: 12. Faith: Pagan. Dietary restrictions: allergy to peanuts. Reason for unwinding: Unruly behavior.

Neil Horrowitz. The taller boy. Age: 14. Faith: Jewish. Dietary restrictions: Kosher. Dislikes spicy foods. Reason for unwinding: Aggressive disposition.

Maxwell Naidu. The smallest of the three. Age: 10. Faith: Hindu. Dietary restrictions: no beef. Reason for unwinding: N/A.

“Hello, you three!” David all but gurgles brightly. “Welcome to Camp Cambell. I’m your counselor David and this is your other counselor Gwen and you three must be Neil, Nikki, and Maxwell!”

“Max,” the small one bites out, but there is no real piss and vinegar in his voice. He sounds jaded, especially so for such a young age. Unlike the other two, he isn’t tugging at his restraints. Black curls fall over dark eyes. “Nobody calls me Maxwell.”

“Okay, Max!” David gushes, giving him the thumb up. “No problem! We’re going to go inside for a quick video but don’t worry, we’ve got a great breakfast all ready for you three and you’re allowed to eat in front of the TV. Better than back home, huh?”

“I watched Dr. Who on my iPod in my bedroom during meals,” Neil replies, his voice shrill and angry. “How do you expect us to eat while you show us videos of kids our age being cut up? This is like Nazi Germany all over again! My great great grandfather-”

“There is nothing about kids being cut up,” Gwen cuts in, voice monotone as always, face blank. Not frowning, but not exactly welcoming either. “It’s just a boring instructional video on camp rules and regulations. It’s about as interesting as the training video employees at a McDonald’s are forced to sit through but it’s only twenty minutes long. So just ignore it, eat your bacon, and we can get on with our day.”

“Bacon? I’m Jewish!”

“Only turkey bacon is served here at Camp Cambell,” Gwen continues to drone. “Only the healthiest food for our campers. All of our food is made with the best, high quality, low fat, low sodium ingredients. We take pride in our-”

She’s reciting the same disclaimer David has memorized so he allows himself a moment to drift away from her words and to examine each of the three children individually. Neil, living up to his papers, is definitely coming off as aggressive already. Though David has to wonder how much of that was prompted by the entire situation. Even he himself might feel a little ornery under these circumstances. 

Nikki’s eyes are darting around like a caged animal and David has a feeling that within minutes she had scouted out the entire area for any possible escape routes. There are none, of course, but she might not realize that yet. She might not know the fence is electric. She might think it possible to squirm through the razor wire on top. Twelve-year-old girls aren’t usually the most knowledgeable individuals when it comes to such measures.

But the last one, the small one. He doesn’t look angry, he doesn’t look frantic, he looks...bored. How much of it is faux nonchalance? Or is he legimiately over everything in his life already? David glances back at the papers again, reading further down. Youngest of three boys. Completed fifth grade, was to start sixth next month. He turned ten only three days ago.

So young. So, so young. David rarely gets any ten-year-olds in his troop. Even twelve or thirteen are young. Fifteen and sixteen are the popular ages, they make up the bulk of the camp. Some seventeen-year-olds, sure, but usually those ones are smart enough to have run away by the time their parents decided to sign them up to be unwound.

A ten, a twelve, and fourteen-year-old? Are they starting to get rid of them earlier and earlier? Before they have the chance to make any big mistakes? That seems especially unfair. Kids should at least be given the chance to mess up before being written off entirely.

But this kid? This ten-year-old boy with his black curls and sleepy looking eyes? Sent to a harvest camp three days after his birthday. And he doesn’t seem upset or surprised by the fact. He must have known he was unloved for a very long time. Maybe one of those unwanted babies. Maybe one of those families that don’t believe in storking. David grew up in a pretty white bread area, surrounded by other rich white kids in other gaudy McMansions, so he can’t say he knows much about Indian culture or Hindu beliefs. Would this boy come from a family where leaving their son on a doorstep for another family to raise would be considered a disgrace? Would his family have been the sort to have an unwanted baby aborted, back before such a thing was made illegal?

It is entirely possible that this child was marked to be unwound since he was in the womb.

But it is just as possible that he is an overly rambunctious child who drove his parents to their last nerve.

That’s part of the job. Never really knowing what kind of families these kids come from. Oh, you can talk to them, ask them about their upbringing. Some of them are more open than others. But you never know if they’re exaggerating. If they’re outright lying. Did their mother really beat them? Or was it just a small swat on the behind for running into a crowded intersection?

But ten.

Ten.

So young, and so, so beautiful. Ten-year-old boys are at that age where they personify perfection itself. Baby fat melted away but the corded muscles of adulthood yet to make an appearance. Skin still soft, face years from the first whisker or pimple. Long-limbed but compact. Small enough that they can easily be picked up and carried by somebody of even David’s admittedly scrawny size. Standing beside Neil, this boy, Max, stands out as exceptionally pretty. Neil is at the awkward teenage boy stage, the stage where he hasn’t figured out how to treat his acne yet and his mustache is just starting to peek through but in scarce, pathetic patches. His skin will not go for much on the market. Even in the Kosher communities, the patients that can only accept Jewish body parts, his pockmarked skin will be low in demand.

Max though. All his body parts will go quickly. It saddens David to even think about it, but the boy probably won’t even last a month in this camp. If he isn’t snapped up by the Hindu community, he’ll be picked off by those needing child parts. Besides tithes, there are few ten-year-olds unwound, and the tithe parts are notoriously expensive to purchase. There will probably be some child out there needing something right away from the cute little boy standing in front of David: spinal cord, underdeveloped brain bits, a jaw, a femur. Something that an older kid wouldn’t be a right fit for.

David doesn’t even notice that Gwen has stopped speaking. He doesn’t even notice he’s staring at Max until the boy meets him with a defiant gaze and demands to know, “What? You some sort of pedophile or something?”

The question jerks David to the core. How could that kid see through him so quickly?

He’s been working with Gwen for two years now and even she has never asked him that. And it’s not like the topic of pedophilia has never come up. David has been made aware of two child abusers on staff since he first started working here. One, a guard, who had been fired soon after the allegations first came out. Not because management had been disgusted by the man’s actions, but because he had “damaged the merchandise.” The girl he had raped had been torn up so badly that her sexual organs had been thrown into the trash, deemed useless for any potential buyer.

The second counselor, a woman in charge of Troop Two, is still on staff. She mostly goes for the young teenage boys, the thirteen- fourteen-year-old kids, but since she only damages them emotionally nobody cares. The other counselors laugh about it behind her back, making jokes about cocktail weenies and plantains.

“It happens all the time,” Gwen had explained after the first incident, shrugging as if it were no sweat off her back. “They see these kids as easy pickings, they get hired, and they get their fill of underage sex here at work. Figure it’s better than having them out on the street, praying on the kids that are actually worth something.”

As if these kids deserve this more just because they’re going to be unable to tell anybody about their abuse in a month or a week or a day. If anything, it gives David more of a reason to protect them. They won’t have time to process and understand what had happened to them. They will blink out of existence with a mind full of turmoil and confusion.

David wants them to be as serene and content as possible on their last day. A month or two might not give him much time to assure such an outcome but he tries his best with every one of his charges.

But he knows there are more predators on these grounds than that counselor from Troop Two.

He never gets a chance to rebuke Max’s accusation. One of the guards starts shoving the three kids towards the door of the building, grunting at Gwen, “I’m only responsible for getting them inside. Once they’re in, they’re your responsibility.”

These guards don’t work for the camp, and they have more Unwinds to pick up and drop off at other camps. Giving these three scared kids a few minutes to process their surroundings is a waste of their time. They’re paid by dropoffs completed, not time spent on the job, and the sooner they’re finished the sooner they can go home, kick off their shoes, and watch the game with a cold beer in their hands.

David takes the keys from the guard and frees the children himself. They all rub at their wrists, relief washing across their faces at the absence of the heavy manacles. But Max only does so for a moment, and then he’s shoving his hands into the pockets of the blue hoodie he’s wearing. It’s large on him, cute in the way oversized hoodies always are on small boys, and it saddens David to know he will have to take it away from him.

No personal possessions. They’ll take their clothes and box them up. And if his parents are like the majority of the parents, the clothes will sit on a shelf in their warehouse for the next three years before being dropped off at a local Goodwill.

Only the parents of the tithes usually come for their last pair of clothing. They don’t bury them. You only bury bodies or belongings of the dead. But everyone knows their children are not dead. That’s the point of unwinding, after all, why it is so much more humane and acceptable than abortion ever was. No child dies. They continue to live, in the bodies of a hundred, two hundred other people. 

Why would a parent bury the clothes of a child that is still living and breathing in a hundred different cities?

David asked the parents of one tithe, once, what they planned to do with the clothes. He hadn’t gone looking for the parents. He had just been at the right place at the right time. The management building, waiting for his quarterly review, when the parents had come in to pick up the box. David, personally in charge of boxing up the clothes of every child he oversees, had recognized the flimsy white cardboard without doubting for a second what was inside.

“We have a little shelf for Charles,” the mother had explained, smiling. Her hair was long and golden, hanging nearly to her knees, but tied back in a braid. She had been wearing a nearly ankle-long dress of some tacky floral print that reminded David of the curtains in his grandmother’s old dining room. “I light a candle for him every day. We’ll put his clothes there, beside his clarinet and that signed autograph of that singer he likes. What’s his name? Lizzy Burnett?”

It had seemed vaguely like ancestor worship to David at the time, but as far as he was aware you were not supposed to worship an ancestor that was still considered alive.

David is sure he’s not the only one who doesn’t fall for that “they’re not dead” bullshit.

They don’t pay attention to the video. But none of the kids ever do. Nikki downs her breakfast like a wild animal, Max listlessly chews on a single piece of the turkey bacon for the whole twenty minutes, and Neil sits at the table, arms crossed angrily across his chest, breathing out his nose.

Then they split up. Gwen takes Nikki, David takes the two boys.

“This is your cabin,” he says as he opens the door to the log cabin. He waves his arm across the small expanse as if he were showing them the entry room of the penthouse suite at a five-star hotel. There are two sets of bunk beds. Two of the beds have obviously been slept in, and two are bare of anything except the mattress itself. He’ll bring them their sheets and other essentials later. “Nurf and Preston are probably at breakfast right now. But you’ll meet them soon, we have plans for a super fun game of Capture the Flag this afternoon. But first I need to ask you to change into your awesome Camp Campbell uniforms. No outside clothes allowed at Camp Cambell. See, even I’m wearing it.”

David points down at his own yellow shirt and khaki shorts. Comfortable enough, and good for sports and athletics. Breathable, not too tight. But every day, David feels like the collar of the shirt has continued to tighten around his own throat worse than any noose.

He has nightmares about that, sometimes. Of the shirt shrinking, the neck hole tightening and constricting until his throat his clamped shut and his breath comes and goes as if he were trying to breathe through a straw. One of those really skinny plastic ones you get at the bar, not the kind you’d get in a smoothie.

But he doesn’t show that constrained, choking feeling in front of the boys. He smiles, his face sore, cheeks straining. The two boys look at each other and then back at him.

Neil is the one who refuses, initially.

“This is what they did to my ancestors,” he accuses, “That’s how they controlled them. They took away everything they owned and made them all dress the same. Fed them starvation diets. Are you going to brand me with a number, too?’

Yes, it’s Neil who starts the protest. But it’s Max who finishes it. He changes wordlessly, emotionlessly, into the uniform. He doesn’t even complain about the childish underwear assigned to him, blue briefs with little airplanes. He dresses with his back to them and David tries not to look, but God, do those briefs fit him cute little butt well. No sag, but not too tight, lifting and accentuating- 

Except when he’s done getting dressed, Max picks up his hoodie and slips it back over his head.

“No sweatshirts, Max,” David tuts, holding out his hand. “Give me it.”

“I’m cold.”

“It’s going to be ninety degrees out today.”

“I get cold easily.”

“Well, then, there are Camp Cambell windbreakers in the closet,” David says, forcing that smile back onto his face. “Come on now, let’s just put that old sweatshirt away.”

“This is my favorite sweatshirt,” Max protests, folding his hands over his chest. “You can’t have it. My nanny gave it to me.”

Nanny. Did Max grow up in a rich family, then? Like David’s own?

Did Max love his nanny like David had loved his?

He is incapable of convincing Max to part with the hoodie. One of the guards takes that responsibility from him instead. 

He comes to the cabin after a twenty-minute argument with Max over the garment, suspicious over their long absence, then threatens the boy with a gun to his chest.

“Go ahead and shoot,” Max taunts, pounding on his chest. “Come on, kill me. You pussy. You won’t fucking dare.. I have a strong, healthy heart. Wouldn’t wanna ruin it by putting a bullet through it, would you?”

Evidently, Max has never been face to face with a tranq gun.

“No!” David tries to intervene, but it’s too late. The dart flies through the air, embedding itself between the boy’s ribs. Max looks down, shocked, already starting to sway on his feet.

The other boy, Neil, stares from across the room, mouth hanging open in shock. Max misses the bed, toppling onto the floor at David’s feet. A pile of blue and yellow and khaki and black hair and soft brown skin.

“These darts only put them down for ten minutes,” the guard mutters. “Hurry up and take that rag off him before he wakes up.”

David can’t tell which is worse, the shaking of his hands or the pounding in his chest.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments? Suggestions? Do you like where this is going or is this idea stupid to begin with? I was planning to do only David's POV but maybe it'd be fun to write from Max's as well, but I'm not sure.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hit me up at Tumblr if you want @Alcoholic-Kangaroo.
> 
> I'm not friending anybody on there first because I don't want to make people uncomfortable fraternizing with a nomap but if you follow me I'll return it.

A few years back, before David started working at Camp Campbell, there had been an enterprising group of older Unwinds who had managed to brew their own alcohol. Some horrid concoction created by fermenting applesauce in a hold by one of the fences, as far as David had been able to piece together from boisterous stories exchanged between other counselors. “It’s why we only serve pudding now, you see?”

  
There are always stories being spread about the ventures of one Unwind or another, but this story stuck with David in particular. While it was an interesting accomplishment, more than that, it was an altruistic one.

The thing about alcohol is that you can’t usually make it in a couple weeks. Especially under the less than favorable circumstances, the camp would have provided. Assuming the first kids to start hoarding their applesauce had known anything about the logistics of fermentation, their experiment had been the start of something they must have known they would not have been alive to see through.

This also meant that every kid that continued to smuggle the sugar-laden mush back to their cabins each evening had also been aware of this fact and that their efforts were not for their own benefit but for those that came after them. There was no reason for those poor, lost children to risk punishment besides the knowledge that the ones that had come before them had done the same for them.

It wasn’t a story of heroics. Not the kind of story you’d read in history books someday. Nobody saved anybody, nobody got a message out to a lost loved one for anybody. It was just one simple act of kindness towards a stranger they the Unwinds would never have the chance to meet.

Honestly, the first time David heard the story he had positively misted up, overcome with emotion. But that was also his first month at the camp and he had spent almost all his free time crying as it was. Before drugs and time had started to dull his senses.

He supposes he’s somewhat of a hypocrite. Maybe it’s better, the way the other counselors do it, slipping powders into their campers drinks. Or outright just offering pills to the older kids, most of who had already had experimented with various drugs in the past and welcomed the psychological respite. 

If David was allowed to get through the day with his veins clogged with various psychotropic medication, why shouldn’t his charges be allowed to do so as well? Maybe it would be easier on them all if they were dulled to the world around them. Wasn’t that the point of the applesauce shenanigans, to allow the kids a break from their bleak reality? A way to control their own discomfort.

It would be so easy to smuggle those substances into the camp. It would be easy to slip the medications into their food. There are rules against drugging the kids but nobody enforces them. Nobody cares about the kids. Nobody cares about anything done to them, as long as their bodies are kept healthy and valuable. 

Nobody cares if they’re starved, they are not confined long enough for their bodies to start consuming their muscles. Nobody cares if they’re beaten, as long as no bones are broken and no bruises left lingering. Nobody cares if they’re groped, molested, raped, as long as there are no tears. As long as virgin hymens are left intact. 

Hymens are high in demand in certain circles. 

No, there are plenty of rules to keep kids safe in this camp, and absolutely no enforcement behind them. No drugging. No beating. No sexual assault. Right.

There are also rules about keeping the kids entertained and distracted as much as possible, and those aren’t enforced either. 

It’s hard to take part in camp activities when you’re a zombie.

But David’s kids aren’t zombies.

Today’s camp activity is Capture the Flag. Well, as close to Capture the Flag as David can pull off in the small, squared in piece of land that belongs to Troop Seven. There are no trees, no bushes, no rocks. But there is sunshine and the songs of birds and plush, overly-long grass in need of a cutting. There is fresh air, the wind blowing a sweet summer breeze through the branches. In the autumn, the wind grows strong, and the leaves from the trees along the perimeter blow into their yard. Once, David went outside the fence and raked up the leaves. He brought them inside the yard in two giant black garbage bags and let the kids play in the piles of orange and brown and red leaves.

Then he had been called into the office and reprimanded for making a mess of the ground. He was told that if he valued his job he would never attempt such a venture again in the future. But he can’t control the trees and the wind and some leaves always make it into the enclosure, eventually, and the kids always seem drawn to them. They stomp the fragile, dry little husks beneath their camp-issued, second-hand sneakers, seeming satisfied at the crunch and the feeling of power that comes over destroying something as organic as themselves.

But it’s summer, not fall, and the leaves are staying put for now. Summer also means lake activities. On Wednesdays, his troop is assigned lake privileges and he gets to treat them all to swimming but the kayaks were sold years ago. The swimming area is fenced in, a small section of the very landmark itself cut apart with cold, rusting metal. Sometimes they play Marco Polo. Sometimes they hold races. Sometimes he brings in noodles he buys with his own paycheck and they have free swim, just paddling around in circles, maybe looking for the occasional fish or turtle. Lake privileges are so rare and so coveted he allows the kids to choose what they wish to do on Wednesdays.

But today is Monday.

David divides the area of their little patch of grass and dirt in two, separating the two sides with a long piece of rope laid across the ground like a grimy, lumpy snake. Separate squares are roped off in opposing far corners of the yard, and beside these squares are set three oversized cardboard bricks. The old-timey ones toddlers used to play with, faded from years spent in the attic before David had dug them out a year ago. He lines up each of the six squares in two neat little rows, evenly spaced apart, just far enough that nobody could conceivably grab both at the same unless they managed a perfect split and had exceedingly flexible toes.

The rules of the game are simple. First side to collect all the blocks on their side of the rope wins. Anybody tagged on the wrong side goes to the “jail” in the corner. If a teammate makes it to the jail and grabs the prisoner’s hand, they are both free if they make it across the rope border still holding hands. If they let go the prisoner goes back to the jail and if either is tagged they both go into the jail.

Not quite the same Capture the Flag that David remembers playing in camp as a kid. That had been a whole day game, requiring stealth and hunting skills. He retains vivid memories of clinging to the trunk of a tree for a heart-pounding hour, waiting for some kids below to leave so he could make a break from it. The hour had seemed like an eternity: bark scraping his palms, splinters pushing beneath his fingernails, ants tickling the back of his hands as they marched back and forth across his skin.

The first time David had proposed the game, Gwen had been hesitant. The Unwinds are already in one prison, why would they want to play a game that could get them stuck in an even smaller one? But they like this game. It’s one of the few games he can get Erid or Preston to take part in.  
Sometimes, he hears voices whispering around him. Young, quiet, wistful voices, wanting to know why they can’t play a game like that. 

On either side of their yard, they share a fence with two other troops. Today, Troop Six are doing their usual laps around the inner perimeter of the fence. If today is like any other day, they’ll run around for an hour until they’re exhausted, then spend the rest of the day sitting on the ground, picking despondently at the grass and carrying out stunted conversations with the other Unwinds.

Troop eight, on their other side, are the tithes. They’ve already completed their morning prayer circle for the day and have moved onto yoga. Gentle music plays from a speaker attached to an iPhone as Daniel leads the campers into the next position. Not a bad activity for a work retreat, perhaps, but not the most exciting activity for a bunch of ten-year-olds.

And all the tithes are ten-year-olds.

No, neither of those Troops get the true summer camp experience.

After explaining the rules, David joins Gwen on the bench off to the side and they monitor the kids as they play. They have three new campers today and David is glad this is the activity he had chosen for the day. The new girl, Nikki, is immediately into it, and eventually, Neil slowly starts to warm up to the action. Even from here, David can all but see the numbers over his head moving as he calculates the speed and angles needed to complete a successful maneuver.

The only camper not taking part today is their youngest.

Max sits on the grass next to the bench, knees pulled to his chest, eyes dazed. It had taken quite a bit longer than the ten minutes previously estimated for him to regain consciousness and he had to be lead with an arm around his shoulders to the activity area. It had felt nice, strangely intimate, to hold the small, stumbling creature to his side. Less like leading a lamb to the slaughter than David would have supposed. Not that Max seems like the type to be compared to a lamb under normal circumstances. Maybe more of a wolf in sheep’ s clothing. The kind that would howl pathetically at the moon and thump his little tail, even as the teeth and claws of adulthood already started to emerge.

The dosage in tranq darts is measured for a sixteen-year-old delinquent, not a ten-year-old lamb-wolfpup-boy.

David wants Max to play. He wants him to have fun. But the boy is so out of it that a line of drool is running out of the corner of his mouth and down the side of his neck. By all accounts, the boy probably should be tucked into bed, not sitting on the grass of a prison yard.

There is no rule about allowing Unwinds to lay in bed most of the day. As long as they do their required exercises, enough to keep fit, the camp doesn’t care how the Unwinds spend their free time.

And sometimes, they do beg David to be allowed to stay in bed. “I’m really tired, can I just get a couple more hours? Please, David?”

He gives them some excuse about it being against camp rules. They don’t have to know that it’s just a lie. They don’t need to know the real truth. He doesn’t want them to know what happened to Dolph.

Dolph had been one of his charges last winter. A tiny boy, smaller than Max even, he had looked closer to eight than ten but the papers had claimed he was of age for unwinding. A fragile boy, he had caught the sniffles within days of his arrival at the camp. Not unheard of, given how cold and snowy the yard could become in mid-January, and when he had begged David to allow him to stay in bed where it was warm and soft well, what was David going to do? Tell him he had to go outside and build a snowman with the other kids? When he had flushed cheeks and snot running down his face? A feverish young boy needed to rest, so David had given him the okay and promised to check on him in a couple of hours.

And he did. David always keeps his word. He left Gwen with the other kids and stopped by his own cabin on the way back, picking up a packet of dry apple cider. His nanny used to serve him hot spiced apple cider when he was sick and it had sounded better than hot chocolate, which can make your throat feel clogged and heavy.

The cider had smelled delicious. Sweet and swirling in the mug, steam rising over the rim, he had entered the boy’s cabin with a smile and an inquisitive question on his lips, “How you doing Dolph? I brought you something hot to drink.”

Dolph didn’t answer. He was curled up into a fetal position, crying very softly to himself.

There was blood on the sheets.

Blood on his thighs.

The boy’s thighs were so, so white. Whiter than the sheets beneath him. Slim, pretty thighs, that David knows would have felt so good in his own hands.

The blood stood out like freshly killed prey on white snow. Defiled by a predator just as surely as Dolph had been. Sweet, tiny little Dolph, whose fingers were like chicken bones in his hand.

He flinched when David touched him and refused to answer a single one of his questions. He didn’t want David anywhere near him. The boy had rounded his back and turned away, curling up tighter in a ball, until Gwen had been able to coax him up and toward the bathroom for a hot bath. David watched them go, the image of a maroon stain on the back of

Dolph’s khaki pants emblazoned in his memory.

There had been white streaks cutting across the back of the boy’s head. Glistening and fresh, glue-like in his raven-black hair.

If he had been any other boy. Or any other man, woman, or child, Gwen wouldn’t have bathed him. They would have taken him to a hospital. They would have tested the semen on the back of his head. They would have talked to him, stitched him up, asked him questions.

For several weeks afterward, Gwen had given David suspicious, sidelong looks that didn’t go unnoticed by him or the other kids.

They all thought David had done it. Of course, they did.

There are only so many reasons somebody becomes a counselor at a harvest camp. Desperation, like Gwen. Piety, like Daniel. Power hunger, like many of the other counselors. Or sexual perversion.

David never did find out who had raped Dolph. One of the guards, most likely. Those meatheads with more muscles than brains. But how could he know which one? And what could he do about it anyway? The guards were afforded much more respect than the counselors. The counselors were just glorified babysitters. 

“Preston,” Gwen calls out, interrupting David’s musings. He blinks and looks towards the fence without even needing to be told where to look. Preston always goes to the same place in the yard and of course, that’s where he is today. Long fingers curled around the chainlink fence. Another boy, several years younger than Preston, stands in a similar position. The top of his head would only touch Preston’s chin if they were able to reach other, but that doesn’t seem to matter to either of them. Their fingers are touching. “Leave the tithes alone Preston, you know the rules!”

Who that tithe is, exactly, is uncertain. David makes a point to avoid learning about any charges besides his own. Just losing them, on average one kid a week, is so difficult. What he does know is that the first time Preston had seen the new tithe appear in the yard, he had all but slammed into the fence in desperation to get to him. The tithe hadn’t been exactly aloof in that regard either.

Honestly, David doesn’t mind their interactions. If two kids know each other from the outside world why shouldn’t they be able to talk to each other? He knows some harvest camps don’t break their kids up into groups. Besides exercises, the Unwinds are left to interact and mingle as they please.

But Daniel doesn’t like other Unwinds talking to his tithes.

“My children are not like your dirty little delinquents and I’d appreciate if you had them keep their dirty little hands to themselves,” Daniel had all but bristled like an overly-agitated cat at David one afternoon in the staff break room. David swore he had actually seen his hair puff up, his spine arch. “My tithes have been purified and any further interactions with the outside world will just sully them.”

David doesn’t like Daniel. He doesn’t know what his deal is but he seems overly preoccupied with the idea of purity. Maybe he’s like David. David has talked to other people online, people like himself, a lot of them fixate on the innocence and purity of children. If Daniel is like that, at the very least it would mean the tithes are safe. No pedophile so obsessed with innocence would touch a child before their unwinding.

Maybe Preston is one of them too. Well, no. He can’t be. Preston is only fifteen. To be classified a pedophile you at the very least have to be over the age of eighteen. David is pretty sure of that. Just like you can’t be classified as having antisocial personality disorder until you’re eighteen. But he could be one when he turns eighteen. If he turns eighteen. If he could be given the opportunity to make it to that age.

He won’t, of course.

But a fifteen-year-old boy with a ten-year-old boy? What else could it possibly be?

“Harrison!” another voice called out sharply. “Get away from him!”

The small tithe on the other side of the fence flinches and pulls away with a certain reluctance in his movement. David sits forward, trying to catch what Daniel is saying to the poor boy, but a thud to his right catches his attention and his neck turns to the boy who had just collapsed to the ground beside him.

Max is finished.

“Can you take care of things here on your own?” David asks, already climbing to his feet. “I’m going to take Max back to the cabins so he can take a nap.”

She looks up at him, that suspicious cock of the eyebrow back, a haunted memory of Dolph making David’s scalp tingle.

“Sure,” she says, shrugging. “Go ahead. Take care of Max.”

There’s a strange emphasis on the words “take care,” David bites at his lip. She knows about him. He knows she does. And anybody else in the world that would be something that could get him fired or at least investigated.

But this is Campbell Harvest Camp, and nobody cares how many pedophiles are working between its four walls of electrified fence.

Max is so light in his arms. David gathers him up, an arm under his knees, the other around his back, and holds him to his chest. The boy doesn’t even stir. He is either totally out of it or good at faking. But he’s so limp in David’s arm, ragdoll-like in a way that is difficult for most people to pull off.

David waits until he’s inside, out of the view of prying eyes, to bury his face in the dark curls and just inhale. An indulgence he knows he should be allowed but Jesus. This kid has curls that just beg to be nuzzled. And he smells so nice.

Most of the Unwinds, after the first few days, begin to pick up a certain scent. The smell of institutionalization. Generic soap, cheap shampoo, harsh laundry detergent. They don’t smell alike, exactly, but there is a sense of claustrophobia and uniformity.

Max smells like the outside world. Like concrete and Yankee candles and new car and sandalwood shampoo. Like freedom and hope.

David would do anything he could to keep him smelling like that. 

He would do anything to keep the kids who come through those gates as free and alive as possible.

But he can do nothing. He is just one man.

Keeping Max pressed close to him, balancing him with one knee pulled up, David pulls back the blankets of the boy’s newly made bed. Preston had made it earlier, instructing Neil as he did so on the proper way to tuck in sheets and fluff the pillow. Again, not something that David is personally that picky about, but surprise inspections from higher up are not unheard of.

He lays Max gently on the bed, being extra careful with his head, and pulls the blankets back up under the boy’s chin. The boy is breathing deeply and evenly, eyelashes fluttering, kissing his cheeks. So dark, almost like moving shadows compared to the red-brown eyelashes David sees when he looks in the mirror. The bed smells bland and unremarkable.

Everything about Max stands out the opposite. Dark skin, black hair, the smell of newness and life in his skin.

Everything about Max is remarkable.

“I’m sorry your first day here is ending up so miserable,” David sighs as he tucks the boy in. He reaches up to brush the hair off his forehead, testing his temperature with the back of his hand just in case. Normal. Unable to help himself, he runs his fingers through those curls again, feeling them flow like liquid silk. “I’m sorry your entire life ended up being so miserable. But I promise I’ll give you the best few weeks you’ve ever had in your life. I’m just sorry they’ll be your last.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So like, I had already planned on making Harrison a tithe. And then I suddenly remembered tithes are harvested at their earliest possible age, which is 13 originally and 10 in the fic soooo, yeah, Preston gets to be a MAP now. Go him.
> 
> Overall, not a fan of this chapter. I don't know. What do you guys think? Too slow?


	4. Chapter 4

The first time David had heard a set of great metal bells tolling out a song had been his first week on campus as a Freshman. Every hour the bells would toll, signaling the time. Five bongs: it was either time to wake up and go for a run or sit down and have dinner. But every few hours, the hours that indicate multiples of three, an actual melody would play. Something small and short but always different. 

Sometimes a bit of London Bridge, other times, Scarborough Fair.

The bells here don’t sound like songs. Only the noon one has a slight melody, the short little generic tune many schools play at noon. Well, not his school. But David had gone to a strange university, which had been his intent, an escape from the ivy class life his parents had tried to direct him towards. 

His school always played Living La Vida Loca on Fridays at noon.

But he had visited friends at other, more traditional universities, and he had heard the same tinkling melody. Eight beats long. Sometimes the same tune plays in the schools in those anime Gwen likes to watch after work. David isn't as big of a fan of those shows as she is but it's nice to be invited over to her side of the cabin anyway. She usually has wine.

Did Japanese schools really have bells like that? Sometimes, the little songs on his own school had been distracting. When you're trying to politely explain to an eighteen-year-old why they should sign your petition for free trade coffee, but Baby One More Time is reverberating through the air, well, some of the gravity is lost.

But it was still better than the harsh buzzing ring that had signaled the end of each class in high school. That sound used to set David's teeth on edge. It had been harsh like his old alarm clock had been harsh. Back before people started using cell phones to wake themselves up. He got to the point that every time the school buzzer went off unexpectedly if he'd lost track of time, he'd jump in his seat, the muscles of his stomach clenching. If he did that too many times a day his abdomen would be sore and he'd feel it the next morning when he went running, making each deep breath just a little more painful.

Now he wakes up to One Week by the Barenaked Ladies every morning.

If only his campers were musicians, he muses to himself. Not that there is an immediate need for any at this moment. How old are the camp musicians at this point? One of them, Edward, has to be seventeen by now. He had been head of the camp band when David had first joined the camp.

The thought of him being unwound, as an unlikeable fellow as he may be, saddens David. Wrapping him up in that familiar layer of remorse and despair that always covers him when he allows himself to think too deeply. When he allows himself to retreat into his own brain so far that nothing can intrude upon his solitude. 

Certainly not the doctor who had just spoken to him.

“David?”

“Huh?”

“I said that was the two o’clock bell, our session is over. When do you want to schedule your next appointments?”

What? Next week? How are they already finished? It feels like he just got here. Has he even spoken to her?

Well, David supposes that's what happens when your weekly counseling session is only fifteen minutes long. He could always talk to Gwen, she does have a psych degree, but, well, the point of seeing a professional is to be honest, isn't it? He could never tell Gwen about his insecurities or his feelings towards certain boys that filter through their troop. Still, he could find a different counselor in town, drive out to see them once a week. It would take a good hour to get there.

An hour where his troop would be left alone with only Gwen or the night staff or the guards to watch over them.

David doesn’t trust Gwen.

It's not that he distrusts hers. He doesn't think she'd do anything purposely harmful to their children. But she can be apathetic and disinterested in them, easily losing focus. Leaving her alone twenty minutes to see the doctor is one thing, even Gwen is capable of paying attention that long, but the several hours a trip to town and back would take?

David is paid to work forty hours a week. Eight to five, Monday through Friday. This is why he lives on the campgrounds, as a full-time employee he has certain benefits. 

The weekends belong to a couple of part-time employees, students from a small community college nearby. They always start with the night shifts before moving to the weekend shifts. The night shifts are unpaid internships and everyone in the camp knows that the real leaders of the night shifts are the guards.

From dinner to breakfast, the campers are locked away in their cabins.

David does the best he can with the cabin confinements. 

The chests are non-matching, he found one at a yard sale and one at a Goodwill, but they’re about equal in size. He’s filled both chests to the brim with things he thinks the children might like.

Board games, cards, books. Handheld video games, stuffed animals, dolls. Crayons, notebooks, MP3 players full of pre-loaded songs.

No television or phones or anything with internet. They aren’t allowed access to the outside world. What would people say if they could hear the words of a real Unwind, transmitted right from their prison? Could the world continue to ignore a child’s pleas if faced with them directly? What if other details leaked? The fact the kids were kept drugged up the majority of the time? The fact that so many of them were beaten daily? The fact that so many of them were raped?

The video games and the MP3 player had even been a point of contention when David had first brought them in. The director had scrolled through them, verifying that they were old-fashioned enough to not be able to access the wifi.

"Some of the nerdy kids we get in the camp would be able to hack an old Gameboy if you aren't careful with them," the director had grumbled, but he had begrudgingly allowed the electronics to pass. WIth David's promise to forgo his yearly raise in return.

Gwen doesn’t see the point of the chests.

“Just let them sleep. All the other kids do.”

But all the other kids are on drugs. Kids are not supposed to sleep sixteen hours a day. They need stimulation besides talking to each other. They need something to take their minds off the misery of their own lives. Doesn’t she understand that? How much difference a good book or RPG can do to distract them from the horror of being an Unwind?

She’s not a bad person. Lazy, but not evil, like some of the counselors are. She might officially turn off her responsibilities at five and turn a blind eye to their plight, but she would never go out of her way to taunt them or harm them.

That’s not enough for David, however. He can’t just glide by on the minimum amount of responsibility. His job does not end at five.

It doesn’t end ever.

And there will always be more campers. More children that need him. They always leave but more always come and, well, how could he possibly abandon them? For every child that is taken another takes his place; even going on vacation is an impossibility. If he were to leave now, just for a week, what would he return to? Nurf? Gone. Preston? Gone. Ered? Gone. New kids in their place.

It isn’t like he can make it up to them when he returns.

David may be stuck in this camp for the rest of his life.

Or until the world runs out of Unwinds.

They don't know about the baby monitors. If the kids knew then maybe the director would be right, maybe they would find a way to hack them and use them to contact the outside world. Obviously, the director doesn't know either. Or the guards. But that's the point. Nobody should know about them because if they knew they'd just find another spot to harm the kids. Even Gwen, with David's limited trust in her, doesn't know that David spies on her charges.

They're hidden in different spots. The one in the boy's room is beneath a loose floorboard between the two sets of bunk beds. The one in the girl's room is in a hole in the wall, behind a painting of a unicorn.

He can’t see the children and, well, David doesn’t want to see the children anyway. That would be an invasion of privacy. This isn’t some sick peeping tom game of his, he doesn’t get off on them. (Usually.)

He just wants to listen. To make sure there isn’t a sudden adult voice in the middle of the night or the sound of crying. Well, the sound of the wrong kind of crying. The sound of pain, really.

They all cry. At night. Of course they all cry.

After a while, you learn to tell the difference between the cries of a child facing his own mortality and the cries of a child being physically harmed.

His doctor prescribes him a new sleeping drug, telling him that it’s stronger than the last and it “You might wake up groggy.”

He doesn’t tell her that he never filled the other prescription, or that the reason he can’t sleep at night is because he needs to listen to the children’s quieting breathing.

Gwen is reading a romance novel, her feet up on his chair.

“What’d I miss?”

“Oh, you know, a hot werewolf fireman leaped over the fence and took me away to be his love slave, what do you think you missed? Nothing, as usual, David. They’re still making their stupid bracelets.”

It's been David's habit for a while now to set the kids up on some arts and craft project before disappearing to his therapy sessions. It's easier for Gwen to watch over some kids painting or doing macrame than it is to try to keep track of eight screaming Unwinds playing tag or soccer. Besides, she doesn't have the patience to try to referee if any fights break out.

Arts and crafts are good for the soul. That's what David's nanny used to say when they'd sit down and paint Christmas ornaments together. "Everybody needs a time when they can just shut off their minds and just be, Davey. Some people pray, some people meditate. I do arts and crafts."

David keeps everything the kids make. Some of them discard their creations immediately after finishing them, some he retrieves from the cabin afterward, but he has a shoebox full of bracelets alone. He never takes them out. Tries not to even look at them when he slips a new one in alongside them. He doesn't want to see the sky-blue beads that Erin had picked because they matched her eyes. He doesn't want to catch a glimpse of the tiny ring of twine that is so, so small that it hardly seems bigger around than David's thumb. Far too small to fit around a wrist except yes, Dolph's wrists had been that small.

He can't. Not yet. Someday, maybe, but not yet. The pain of looking at them causes an ache so deep in his guts its as if his lower intestines had been ripped out of him.

Except, for those kids, that was exactly what had happened to them. And that’s why he keeps their creations. Why he needs to remember them.  Because somebody fucking has to.

“Nerris!” David exclaims happily, leaning over the girl’s shoulder. “That’s beautiful! You really have a way with macrame! Oh my, that rhymed. I’m a poet and I didn’t even know it!”

“It’s based on an ancient Elvish casting plate,” Nerris gushes excitedly, “Used to fight dwarves in the time before the Great Peace. I mean, it should be made of Dragonsteel, but I think it looks pretty good.”

"It does," David assures, patting her shoulder. He moves on, walking past Nikki, who mostly seems to just be tying a mess. But she seems happy about it. She's chattering loudly into Neil's ear, who appears to be doing his best to ignore her. Her hair is pulled up in pigtails and the hair at the nape of her neck has begun to pull free, thin and curling, damp with sweat. Today is hot and tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter. At least tomorrow they have lake privileges.

Neil’s face looks red and blotchy from the sun. David had handed out sunscreen this morning, told them all to put it on, but he wouldn’t be the first kid to purposely burn their skin just to make their parts less valuable. He’s had kids break their own nose and chip their teeth just to decrease the value of them. One camper, a boy from troop three, had burnt his entire body with a hot penny for two weeks, the results of his labor unseen until the day of his unwinding had come and they had ended up having to discard most of his skin.

“Well that’s an interesting pattern,” David observes, leaning down just a bit. Neil smells like a sweaty teenage boy, like oil and salt, as if he had been rolled up in a giant bag of potato chips. “But that doesn’t look like a bracelet, Neil.”

“It’s not,” the teenager rolls his eyes and lifts his creation in the air. It’s a winding, almost tube-like structure. Intricate and beautiful but vaguely familiar. “It’s a double helix.”

“Wow, you made that from memory? Amazing!”

“Well, it’s not rocket science,” Neil replies, but he sounds just a bit smug and satisfied with himself and that’s all that matters. If Neil doesn’t want to make a bracelet and he feels some sort of accomplishment making...whatever that is, then good for him.

Onto the next kid. Something is already starting to melt inside David, running down his throat like hot chocolate, warming his belly. He ignores it, steeling himself, willing an ice inside himself to freeze the sloshing hot chocolate pouring through his veins.

It's been a long time since he's been so inexplicably drawn to a child like this. He loves all his campers, of course, he becomes attached to each and every child under his care no matter how short their stay may be. But this is different. Something about Max is so simultaneously hard yet soft that it feels like a fine line between condescending and breaking. He's like a chunk of badly melted lead, painfully brittle. 

David touches Max’s hair as he leans over him, checking to see how his macrame is coming along. But he’s not holding anything in his tiny fingers beside a large, green leaf he’s apparently shredding into long strands. There is a pair of scissors to his right and some diced up pieces of twine in front of him, as if he had just sat there and deliberately snipped his supplies into tiny little pieces of useless junk.

Well, David bought the materials for them to express themselves. If this is how Max best expresses himself? But still.

“Max? Did you not want to make a bracelet?”

“It’s stupid,” Max scoffs, shaking his head to knock David’s hand off him. David’s nails scrape along his scalp for a second before falling to the side. “What’s the point? Where am I going to wear a stupid macrame bracelet? To the chop shop? Show it off to those assholes before they cut off my legs?”

"If you don't want to make a bracelet you could make something else," David suggests brightly, ignoring the outbreak. He used to try to reason with the kids, make them feel better about their unwinding, but after two years he knows the truth. The best thing for the kids is to just let them vent. But not in front of the other kids. Some of them, like Nerris, have been here long enough to have become accepting and almost comfortable, if not happy, with their fates. "Look at what Neil did. How about I show you how to make a horse?"

“I don’t like horses.”

“A bunny rabbit?”  
“I’m not five,” Max snaps.

David huffs out his nose, taking a few deep breaths. In, out. Feel the air expanding. Breathe out the bad emotions.

It's not right to lash out at campers. They have every right to feel anger and resentment towards everybody and everything in their lives right now. David would feel the same way if he knew his days were numbered. It's not their fault their parents would do this to them. 

"That's okay, Max. You don't need to do macrame if you want." David straightens his back and walks to the end of the table, turning to look down at the two rows of kids. Nerris, Nikki, Neil, and Max on one side, Preston, Nurf, Erid, and Sasha on the other. Two full cabins, a good number for team sports since nobody will be outnumbered. "Hey everybody, how about we let Max choose our next activity? Wouldn't that be great?"

Most of the kids didn't respond, Sasha groans, and Ered mutters an apathetic "Whatever."

"What do you say, Max? What do you want to do for the afternoon activity?"

“Machine gun building?” Max suggests, sardonically.

“Come on Max, be serious here. We’ll all do whatever activity you choose for the next two hours, what do you want to do?”

David watches the boy rub tiredly at his brow, as if he was fighting back a headache. His face is shiny as well, though not outright dripping like Neil’s. David sees no hint of burn on his face but he doesn’t possess Neil’s complexion either.

“Alright, fine,” Max mutters, letting his arm fall on the table. “Water guns. Do you have any water guns?”

"Sure I do!" David confirms, happy to know that he'll be able to fulfill Max's wishes. "Is that what you want to do, Max? A water gun fight?"

“Can we do water balloons, too?” Nurf asks, already brightening up at the idea.

“I know some good water spells,” Nerris joins in.

It's been a while since David has brought out the water guns. Gwen doesn't like them, she complains about getting splashed and her bra showing through the flimsy camp uniforms. But hey, a camper requested them, she can't say anything against them after receiving a request, right?

Some of them still have water inside and it smells stale. He instructs the kids to rinse them out as he hands each child a plastic gun. 

“Be careful not slip,” he calls out as they start running around the yard, hiding and ducking behind chairs and shrubs. “The grass can get awfully wet!”

Gwen avoids getting wet by camping out in the bathroom, filling up water balloons at the sink. She takes far longer than she should, coming out with sixteen ballons at a time (enough for each camper to grab one in each hand) but considering they have a limited amount of ballons to waste David doesn't complain. If hanging out in the bathroom, playing on her phone, keeps Gwen from complaining about the activity then it's fine.

The thing is, David hadn’t planned on taking part in the game. Oh, they play some games with them. Not ones like soccer, where the adults with their long legs would give an unfair advantage, but other activities like games are fine.

He just stands to the side, observing, watching out for any sprained ankles or nasty falls, but everyone is playing nice. They’re not bad kids, really they’re not. Even Nurf, who enjoys spraying the kids directly in the face, isn’t really hurting anybody.

"Don't you want to play, Mr. David?" Nikki is the one who comes up to him. She had taken two guns from the bucket he has earlier present, a super soaker and a regular small squirt gun. She holds the smaller one out now, full of water as if she wants him to take it. "You can be on my team."

“Really?” David asks, eyes already starting to shine. “You want me to play?”

"You're really tall," she tells him. "You'll make a good bodyguard."

That proves to be false. While David is quite a bit taller than all the other kids, he's rail-thin and does little to successfully block Nikki from getting wet. Not that it really matters, the entire point of the game is to get wet.

Which David does. Thoroughly. When Max sneaks up behind him and gets him in the back of the head with a water balloon.

David shrieks in shock as the water, ice-cold, explodes down his back.

At five, Gwen comes to call them for dinner. Out of breath and fingers going pruney, they drop their guns back into the basket and trudge past Gwen, dripping wet. Hair limp.

Smiling.

Gwen stares at David, her mouth a straight line. Her eyes go down and David’s follow, catching sight of his own nipples poking out against his wet shirt. He yelps and crosses his arms across his chest, face growing warm.

“Why are you so weird?” Gwen asks, sighing. But she doesn’t really want an answer. She turns to follow the kids, yelling after them, “No! Not towards the cafeteria! To your cabin, you all need to change! Preston! You’re getting mud all over the floor, stop dancing!”

The night crew asks why they’re later for dinner. Gwen has already clocked off, leaving the girls to dispose of their own wet, dirty clothes.

“Just lost track of time, I guess,” David smiles, trying to ignore their stares and the way the boys’ wet clothes are growing cold against his chest. There’s mud all over his lower legs and water dripping down his face. “I’m going to just drop these off in the laundry and head out then.”

Despite the heat of the day, the buildings are cold inside from the air conditioning. By the time David makes it back to the cabin he's shivering. But Gwen is inside their shared bathroom, getting ready for a date, and is in no rush to hand over the shower.

Shaking like a scared chihuahua, David strips off his wet clothes and throws them in the hamper. Unlike the campers, he has to do his own laundry on his free time. His nipples still stand out, stiff, absurdly pink against the paleness of his chest.

“Gwen, come on,” David pleads, knocking on his side of the bathroom. She has locked his door from the inside, and presumably her own on the other. “I’m going to get hypothermia.”

“Liar,” she calls through the door. Water is running on the other side. “Can’t get hypothermia when you’re that hot and bothered over some kid. You pervert, go jerk off.”

David winces. She must have taken the nipple erections as some sign of arousal. Cold water just makes them go hard, okay? It wasn’t like he was staring at Max the whole time.

Okay, some.

But not the  _ whole _ time.

How cute had he looked though? With his big head of curls drooping over his eyes, that mischevious smile on his face? Max has been in camp approximately thirty-three hours now and that was the first smile he had seen on the boy’s face.

The smile of a little demon, but somehow adorable all the same.

David wants to see that smile again.

He hopes he gets to see it.

He hopes he is the cause of it.

Did Max react to the water as David did? He hadn't looked specifically at the boy's chest but the campers' shirts are just as thin as their own, it seems like if his nipples had gone hard that David would have noticed such an occurrence.

Of course, they might just be very small and less noticeable on a boy Max’s size.

David sits on the edge of his bed, his body still feeling cold and clammy, and allows himself to close his eyes for a second and just remember how Max had looked. How good he had looked, with his shirt soaking wet and clinging to the curves of his body. How his hips had flared out just a bit, accentuating his tiny waist.

How would it feel to hold the boy around the waist like that? Even cold and wet, the idea of holding Max against him is enticing. If they pressed together long enough it would turn the wet clothes between them hot, like wet laundry thrown in the dryer for maybe five minutes then pulled back out.

That’s enough.

He stands back up and walks to the other side of the bed to switch on the baby monitors. He doesn’t expect to be able to hear anything yet, they should be at dinner, but they must be dawdling because quiet voices emit from the boy’s monitor.

“So what’s with him anyway? Is he a kiddy diddler?”

“Why do you say that?”

Neil and Preston.

“When I woke up yesterday he was just sitting next to my bunk staring at me,” Max joins in the conversation. “Just watching me sleep like some fucking pervert.”

“Well, if he was a ‘kiddy diddler’ he would have been doing more than staring, wouldn’t he?” Preston challenges the other two boys. 

"Not necessarily," Neil puts in his two cents. "He might want to wait until he has more time. I'd say he'd probably wait until night, sneak in and do it while the guards are on break."

“Well, he’s not going to a get a chance to try and rape me,” Max replies, his voice abrasive. “We’re going to get out of here before he has a chance. How’s it going, Neil?”

“I’m trying,” Neil responds, his voice ending in a high whine. “I told you to give me a few days.”

“It’s not going to work,” Preston tells him, voice haughty. “You’ll never get out of here, and even if you did they’ll just catch you again.”

"Shut up, Preston, we didn't ask for your opinions," Max bites out. "Goody-two-shoes. What are you even in here for? Your dad didn't want a gay son hanging around?"

“No,” Preston replies, voice going unusually quiet for him. “No, nothing like that. My grandmother died, you see, and, well. Nobody wants a fifteen-year-old in the foster system now, do that?”

“That’s shitty,” Neil responds, his voice equally quiet. The shrillness David has already become accustomed to gone. “I’m sorry man.”

“Well, none of us have the best of circum-”

“Boys, come on,” a loud, adult male voice punctures the moment. “You’ve nearly missed dinner, finish getting dressed or you’re going hungry tonight.”

The voices go quiet, then a few moments later the sounds of shoes on wood as they exit.

David stares out the window of his room, the one facing towards the forest, and just lets his mind go quiet. After a while, the sound of the water running in the bathroom long quiet, he stands up, pulls a doctor's prescription from his pocket, and throws a crumpled ball of paper into the trash.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: I know it's Maxvid week and just wanted to say I've been enjoying all the Maxvid content you guys are putting out a lot! However, since the official Maxvid page said nomaps could only interact if they were actively seeking help (I've had less than stellar experiences with mental health care professionals) I've tried to be considerate and not bother anybody taking part, as per the request. If you want to follow me on Tumblr though, I'm always looking for mutuals @alcoholic-kangaroo.
> 
> Anywho, what's everyone think? This fic going too slow? I feel like it's going way too slow.
> 
> Updated 11/24: now @alcoholic--kangaroo since I was purged, yes I just added an extra dash.


End file.
